


Where Meetings Take Place

by TiamatsChild



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode V: Empire Strikes Back, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Episode Related, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-29
Updated: 2016-05-29
Packaged: 2018-07-10 21:05:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7006849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TiamatsChild/pseuds/TiamatsChild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lando Calrissan is at a threshold: he's pretty sure Luke Skywalker is at one too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where Meetings Take Place

Letting Cloud City go was the hardest thing Lando Calrissian had done in a long, long time. Harder than building her. Harder than all the horrible choices he'd made trying to hold her that cascaded into more and more horrible choices no matter how hard he tried to find the least horrific choice. Choices that piled up and piled up and made it harder and harder to see a way through, to find an ending, to stop. 

Not the hardest thing he'd done in his life. But hard.

Very hard, and he wasn't going to be quite the same person anymore, he knew from experience. You made choices like that and you changed. It was – something he'd accepted as he did it, something he'd turned to, moving from what was to a still undetermined what would be with all the resolve he had within him. 

It was a loss.

In most ways it was the least of the losses: he was pretty sure most of his people had got away safe, which was more than he could say for Han. But he felt it, even so. It wasn't the physical space or even the equipment: that had been expensive and labor intensive, but Lando liked work and never had trouble getting his hands on money, he could probably do that part again. It wouldn't even take him as long this time. No, it was the community, the ebb and flow of the group, the people and their relationships to each other that had been sundered, and while he was pretty sure – pretty sure – had to keep telling himself – that they'd got away - 

The community was gone forever and never coming back.

Lando was trying not to dwell on this. It was a bad idea, not least because he'd deliberately – not just burned but mined and blown – his bridges with pretty much all the people on the _Falcon_ and they weren't going to be interested in his grief when they had their own grief he'd had a hand in making. If he wanted to get through this still of some use to anyone and particularly to Han, he needed to avoid pressing his luck too far.

Probably spending this much time sitting by Luke, showing him all his card tricks and letting Luke pick them apart counted more as pressing his luck than otherwise. But it was – compelling. Luke was compelling. He had a feeling that Luke had lost more than Han on Cloud City, too. More than just his hand. He struck Lando as a man at an ending, not sure where the beginning he needed was going to come from.

Lando was glad to get the chance to sit with him in that threshold a while. 

“Thanks for this,” Luke said, at a point at which if Lando had been looking to win money off of him, he'd have been in real trouble.

“You're welcome,” Lando said, because he didn't really know Luke yet, but even so 'it's nothing' or 'no trouble' seemed wrong for Luke's gravity, too casual a dismissal. It would shut a door, and Lando wanted his doors open.

“Most people I meet who do this kind of thing are making a living off of it,” Luke said. “It wouldn't be right to try this on them.” 

“I _have_ earned my living with card tricks,” Lando said, “though not for a long time. I have to admit, I might not have found this as – welcome, back then.”

Luke smiled at him, small and almost distressed, then looked away.

“I'm having fun,” Lando told him. Which was true. Which wasn't quite the whole truth. 'Welcome' had been closer. Luke unslumped slightly. “I also have no idea how you're doing this.” He smiled, inviting as he could, trying to offer the space for a confidence, not ask for or demand one.

That got him Luke watching him again, which was a strange sensation. Lando knew he was being evaluated, but there was nothing hostile about it, which was baffling considering that Luke knew by now that Lando had had a hand in practically gift wrapping him for Darth Vader, a hand in hurting Han. Lando probably should have felt ashamed of himself, under that steady, curious gaze, but he didn't. It felt, curiously, good, as if Luke was fully capable of taking him apart and then putting them back together again and that could be – good. Could be something Lando wanted. It was hard to hold still under. But Lando had a lot of practice at that inviting smile, that particular tilt to his shoulders, the angle of his hands. He waited. 

Eventually Luke nodded and said, “I'm just listening.”

“To the cards?”

Luke frowned. “No, I don't think so. To – the probability? To chance.”

Lando couldn't help grinning at him. “But I'm cheating.”

“That makes it easier,” Luke said, and reached out with his one remaining hand, took a card from him, turned it over. “There's a – it's a disturbance. It feels like a ripple. I'm good at finding things that way. Always have been.”

“Yeah?” Lando said, carefully. “I knew a Finder, once. She could track people, if she had a thing they'd held or touched. Or she could read people off objects. She'd solve problems that way. Worked as a private investigator.”

Luke nodded, slowly. “Were you friends?” he asked.

Lando shook his head. “No, I just ran errands for her sometimes. She'd feed you, and she tipped.”

“Huh,” Luke said. And then, like it was a secret, “I've never met a Finder.” 

“They don't advertise, these days,” Lando said, and took the opportunity to shuffle the cards that remained to him as showily as possible. Luke smiled, and handed him back the card he'd taken. Lando shuffled again, returning it to the deck. The controlled movement of the cards calmed him, soothed him, and he thought it might do the same for Luke, if Luke would let it. “The Empire doesn't like it.”

Luke laughed softly. “I think it's not that,” he said. “I think the Empire likes it fine. They just don't appreciate small time operators. It's like taxes.” 

Lando snorted. “They haven't gutted the constitution quite enough yet that they can stop municipalities from levying taxes,” he said. “Taxes are a power retained by all duly chartered governmental bodies. At least, last I'd heard. Who knows what goes on on Coruscant since they dissolved the Senate?”

“Well,” Luke said. “I know people who know.” He ducked his head and smiled and looked sidelong at Lando from under his lashes. It wasn't flirtatious. It was just diffident, shy, a little rueful. The part of Lando that had no self preservation instinct promptly started making plans to get him to do it again. “They could become people you know,” Luke said. “Sometimes they share just to have an ear for the things that don't matter strategically.”

“You're one hell of a listening ear,” Lando said, and looked down at his cards again because looking at Luke was getting overwhelming. 

“You could join up,” Luke said. “I know you want to help Han. You don't have to join the Alliance for that. But I think there's a lot of things you care about.” 

Lando took a long slow breath, careful. “I made a lot of choices this week. A lot of them were wrong.”

“Yes,” Luke said. “So did I.” 

Lando looked back up at him. Luke was picking at the blanket he'd been wrapped in since Lando threw it around him back beneath Cloud City, teasing at the heavy weave with his short, blunt fingernails. There was silty black earth under them, Lando noticed, like Luke had spent time in a river delta recently. He was frowning, and the tension of the pain that they hadn't been able to adequately treat with the painkillers from the _Falcon_ 's medical kit was more pronounced. The bruised look was back.

“We've got people who did a lot worse in the Alliance,” Luke said. “You wouldn't be the only one. And Leia and Chewbacca are angry at you, but they trust you.” 

That was true. Lando knew it. He'd been thinking of it to himself as bridge burning, as breaking the relationship, because that kept him in check. He couldn't take Chewbacca's old friendship for granted: Chewbacca had withdrawn it. He needed the pause that gave him. But he knew it wasn't really true. If he'd destroyed that connection and confidence completely, he'd be dead now, no matter what Leia's pragmatism dictated. 

“I'll keep that in mind,” Lando said, more because he didn't want to say yes too easily – it would seem insincere, flighty - than because he didn't already know what the answer would be. “I will. I will seriously consider the matter.” 

“That's all I can ask,” Luke said. 

Lando nodded to him, almost a small bow, putting all the solemnity he could summon into it, grave as an ideal judge. And then he smiled, and said, “It should be safe to give you more pain meds, now, if you want. I could go get them.”

“Uuuuugh,” said Luke, and threw himself as dramatically backwards as was possible when he only had a few inches to work with because the _Falcon_ 's entire pillow population had been employed to prop him up on the bunk. “I hate needing them: they make me feel like something's stuck in my throat.” 

“Not nauseous?”

“No, like something's stuck in my throat, it's awful.” 

“You don't have to take them right now,” Lando pointed out, mentally putting heavy clamps on his urge to laugh. 

“I probably should,” Luke said, and sighed. “But I don't want to. It was easier to handle when you were showing me card tricks, do you mind?”

“Nope,” Lando said, readily. “Not at all. Like I said earlier, I'm having fun.” 

He shuffled the cards to start setting up a new trick, smiling to himself at the feeling of Luke's gaze on his hands, that clear, unwavering attention that he liked, that he wanted more of. Lando could stop himself from pressing his luck for a while: when it was necessary to play life cautious, waiting for a chance to come along, or when he was grieving, or, as in the present case, the both together. But he got the feeling Luke wasn't that kind. The watch and wait, the quiet, that wasn't any kind of holding back. 

Lando would be making a lot of choices around Luke, he could tell. He was making them already. But for the first time since Vader turned up, the choices he was making didn't make him feel bad in one way or another: cold and lost, or trapped and slipping, or hard inside with desperation, or simply awash with grief. He felt pretty good about them, point in fact. 

“Hey,” he said to Luke. “Thanks for this.”

“For what?” Luke asked, blinking slowly, going still.

“Oh, well,” said Lando, grinning, and nodded to the cards. “Take your pick.”

Luke considered him for a moment, then huffed a little laugh, barely a puff of air, shook his head, and reached out his hand.


End file.
